These are the games they are going to have to win to stay in contention for the playoffs. They can not afford to fall behind too far in the standings as they wait for Bogut to return to full health. Nice play from Barnes. His confidence and assertiveness is growing, and his team's confidence in him as well.

Hopefully they can continue at .500, until Bogut is back and going 100%. Then we'll see what they're really capable of.

I'm glad that Harrison is doing what I recently said I was expecting of him. Close to 20 PPG and taking the matter into his hands. It's obvious that Curry is playing in streaks, and that Klay is just taking to many shots when his shots are not falling, and sadly...that's happening quite a lot this season. If Harrison can beast out, I'll be thrilled.

Guybrush wrote:I'm glad that Harrison is doing what I recently said I was expecting of him. Close to 20 PPG and taking the matter into his hands. It's obvious that Curry is playing in streaks, and that Klay is just taking to many shots when his shots are not falling, and sadly...that's happening quite a lot this season. If Harrison can beast out, I'll be thrilled.

Harrisosn going on a mean player mode would do wonders for us, because, as I predicted, our offense will have problems in half court without slashers and post-up players - the teams just focus on thompson and curry and let mark jackson isolate/post up lee as much as he wants - lee is essentially a pick n roll, pick n pop, occasional hustle play scorer - he's bad in isos against power forwards who mostly are as fast as him and bigger, and he was never ever (no matter how much 32 wants it) a post-up/low post player without being fed on a roll or a cut, or something that results from having some open space (created either by pushing tempo, good pick or extremely efficient ball movement).Carl landry just does not pass, and maybe he should not.So our backcourt shooters are most of the time very well covered which results in some low percentage shots, though with curry it might be it's still his ankle to some degree.I still think this team played only one good game (@clips) and never think they are favourites against anyone.

- The Harrison Barnes fan club is officially open for business! And even though some of you may hesitate to hop on the wagon, the member list is going nowhere but up. 19 and 13, 6 of 8 from the line, abusing DeShawn Stevenson into a 3-for-9 game. Attacked the rim, got to the line, hit a triple... If Barnes maintains this ruthless aggression on both sides of the court, the Dubs will be set without Rush. Up until last night, his biggest issue was his passiveness. Hopefully, that's all over with. And who do we have to thank, according to the kid? Your head coach, Mark Jackson, who told the rook to quit being tentative and just play!

- The backcourt funk continues: Steph and Klay combined for 6/23 shooting (26%) and their combined 11 assists was muddled by their 7 turnovers. While they pulled out the win, the fact that these two are shooting 30-something percent is getting worrisome.

- I'm not sure who to give center minutes to at this point. Landry got the lion's share of minutes (23), but was a rather pedestrian 10 and 5, amidst 5 fouls and 3 turnovers. Ezeli continues to start the game and ride the bench late, his 18 minutes only yielding a 2 and 2 effort... And last night marked his 3rd game in a row without a block. In fact, for the benefit of those that compared him to Udoh, Uncle Festus has 5 blocks in 8 games this year and 4 of them occurred in the 4 games that Bogut started. Strangely enough, Andris Biedrins in 16 minutes hauled down 4 boards and picked up a steal (along with his typical 3 fouls). As weird as it is to admit, that's two games in a row where I'm shocked Jackson didn't go back to Biedrins...

- For those who don't think Jackson is coaching up the defense, understand: Lou Williams, 5 of 14. Josh Smith, 6 of 16. Jeff Teague, 4 of 12. Anthony Morrow, 1 of 5. DeShawn Stevenson, 3 of 9. In fact, without Ivan Johnson bullying his way to a 7 of 8 game, the Hawks shot 38% as a team - to the Warriors' 46%. With all due respect, 8th... I loved this game. Perfect example of how to hold a lead, how to feed the hot hand, how to play inspired team defense, and how to rebound. In other words, the exact opposite of what Warriors fans are used to.

Guess I'm being a little greedy. I think we are improving on defense, but I'm not going to give the Warriors the entire benefit of stopping ATL. With an exception to Johnson who single handedly kept the hawks in the game, no one was going inside. So, in a way, the hawks shot themselves in the foot and they were still in the game.

I think if you took this game and took away the turnovers, it would've been a blowout no questions asked. They scored something like 29 points off turnovers. I don't want to take wins for granted because I know how hard they are to come by as a dubs fan, but this was a depleted roster and we should've blown them out. If we had cut down on our turnovers it wouldn't have been a game, and deep down inside that's what I wanted. I don't mind scraping by for wins, but it would be ideal that we win some of these games with poise and consistency. I feel like we should've won this game decisively, but we didn't.

To recap, I'm glad we won. I just wasn't impressed. I guess it's how you look at the half full/half empty glass, and I'm naturally more of a pessimists than I am an optimist.

I'm sure no one thinks that he is useless, or good for nothing. He has his good sides. Motivating players being the biggest of them. That's why I'm glad he talked to Harrison, and it resulted as it should. For biggest part, I'm glad that he realized how good Barnes can be, and told him to be aggressive. At least...if Malone didn't ask him to talk to Barnes.

He is a good guy, I'm sure, but somehow he leaves a lot to be desired, as a coach. I don't want him gone, unless we can get some real good, complete coach.

On a side note, 32, how do you like AK47's game so far? I believe we had some talk about him during the preseason, and the guy is balling now. Even his 3's are 50%.

AK47 can still play. He was great in the Olympics and he's continued that form in the NBA so far. The T-Wolves are without 4 of their 5 starters and they've still been competitive because of Kirilenko.

8th ave wrote:Guess I'm being a little greedy. I think we are improving on defense, but I'm not going to give the Warriors the entire benefit of stopping ATL. With an exception to Johnson who single handedly kept the hawks in the game, no one was going inside. So, in a way, the hawks shot themselves in the foot and they were still in the game.

I think if you took this game and took away the turnovers, it would've been a blowout no questions asked. They scored something like 29 points off turnovers. I don't want to take wins for granted because I know how hard they are to come by as a dubs fan, but this was a depleted roster and we should've blown them out. If we had cut down on our turnovers it wouldn't have been a game, and deep down inside that's what I wanted. I don't mind scraping by for wins, but it would be ideal that we win some of these games with poise and consistency. I feel like we should've won this game decisively, but we didn't.

To recap, I'm glad we won. I just wasn't impressed. I guess it's how you look at the half full/half empty glass, and I'm naturally more of a pessimists than I am an optimist.

We were pretty depleted, too, 8th. Both teams missed their starting center and their 6th man. And even then, Smith is probably the best man left on both teams and he most definitely shot ATL out of the game. I think both teams shot poorly; Atlanta simply played riskier defense which resulted in more steals, but also more fouls and less rebounds. I'll take that win, 8 games in. The Dubs are sitting pretty at .500 and they won't really catch the easy part of their schedule until closer to April.

And, Guy, AK47 is ballin in 8 games... But I have just as much faith in him NOT shooting 60% all year as I do for Curry NOT shooting 35%. It's early; a career 47% shooter isn't gonna stroke 60% of his shots all year. He's definitely been better than I anticipated, though.

Of course. I wasn't saying that he's gonna shoot 60%, that would be unreal. Though, he is mostly playing Sf for the Wolves, cause Williams is at PF, if I'm not mistaken, which makes it even greater.

And, AK's biggest contribution is not in scoring, he does it all, and he does it all well this season. You name it, he's got it...rebounding, defense, steals, blocks, leadership...and scoring. If he continues to play this good this season (minus the shooting, which won't be as good), I think he might be the steal of this year's FA class.

Looks like I am late to congratulate Barnes on game well played. I know it has been mentioned before that the warriors do not have much slashers or people that are aggressive to the Rim so to hear and see Barnes score and rebound well shows a potential success. I was unable to watch the game but I saw the stats somewhere pointing to the warriors dominating the points in the paint. Also saw highlights that showed creativity in the low post area meaning we saw a lot more involvement down low then previous games. Shooting team yes, but they can't rely on it all the time specially from curry and Thompson. Apparently Barnes might be reading this board as it was mentioned before that he was not showing aggressiveness to the rim, and what do you know he breaks out.